


Anatomy For Beginners

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Tried and Tested Series [11]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bottom Derek Hale, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s03e02 Chaos Rising, M/M, Mpreg, Pregnancy, Rescue Missions, Smart Scott, Top Stiles Stilinski, Werewolf Biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1875180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You have the Stilinskis,</i> hisses a nasty voice in his mind as he chases his sister’s scent. <i>You have your baby. You have Isaac. What are you doing?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Anatomy For Beginners

Cora Cora Cora. Her name beats like his pulse under everything he says and does as the Argents and the pack track his betas. Cora, whose hair he used to braid before she went to bed, Cora who he played Barbies with, Cora the only one younger than him who had always been his like he was Laura’s. Cora, his baby sister, is alive. He could spend every moment from here until he sees her again crying and know that it has nothing to do with hormones. It’s just family. He has family.

 _You have the Stilinskis,_ hisses a nasty voice in his mind as he chases his sister’s scent. _You have your baby. You have Isaac. What are you doing?_

Derek quashes the voice because he is responsible here. He turned Boyd and Erica, so in a way they’re his children just as much as the one inside him right now, and Cora… The fire is his greatest sin no matter what Stiles or the Sheriff or anyone else says. Wherever she’s been for the last six years, it wasn’t in her home and that’s on him. He can’t leave this and go home. Not with all that on his conscience. 

All of that makes doesn’t make the experience of hunting his own pack, with the Argent hunters, Jesus fuck, any easier. He is terrified okay? Everyone knows it because he reeks of the fear. He can smell it on himself and Jackson makes two comments about his “aftershave” before Isaac actually shoves him into a tree so hard the whole trunk cracks right down the center from the impact. Jackson snarls and Derek has to grab him by the back of the neck and yank him back with a snarl to prevent an out and out fight between the two of them as the tree falls over.

“Enough,” Chris growls at them. “You’re doing nothing but giving away our location. Does common sense mean nothing to you children?”

Chris’s phone goes off before any of them can answer him. It’s Allison and her voice comes out clear but tinted tinny over the speaker. “Erica split from the group,” she reports. “Scott and I just kept her from attacking a couple of civilians, and he doesn’t smell Boyd or Cora anywhere but I could use back up.”

“Jackson,” Chris says sharply, “go.”

“But-“

“Aside from Derek and Scott you’ve been a wolf longest. You can help her the most.”

Jackson sighs but doesn’t argue. He’s gone a heartbeat later leaving Derek alone with Chris and Isaac on the trail of Boyd and Cora. It’s marginally better that way. At least Derek doesn’t have to play referee anymore. He’s going to have to deal with the Isaac and Jackson situation at some point though, which is just freaking fantastic.

All sarcasm aside, Derek is not surprised when everything breaks down in their little hunter posse. Chris has hunter tech that makes him want to retch because god, they have killing his people down to an art form don’t they? Even that’s not enough to counter minds that have lived in the area since they were toddlers. They know the terrain and they want to run, hunt, kill, eat, then fuck and sleep.

Stiles would be horrified when Chris says “Let’s split up.” Those words are poison to him, cursed, but it really is the best away. Derek agrees with him right until they end up down in the basement of Beacon Hills High School where he corners Boyd and Cora with Scott. He’s about to go in when Scott throws an arm across his chest, slamming his hand into the hard metal of the basement door. 

“If you think I’m letting you go in there alone you’re crazy.”

“You have to hold the door shut, Scott. If they get out, forget the alpha pack, they’ll tear the town apart. Everyone else just barely managed to get Erica down and she’s just one wolf. They’re two.”

“So I’m supposed to let you go in there to die?”

“Instead of letting them tear each other apart? Yes.”

“No!” Scott hits him, hard. It’s an open palmed slap that lands so hard it rattles his brain in his skull. He can actually feel his body healing what would otherwise be a fairly severe concussion. 

“You don’t get to die and you don’t get to take the Puppy with you. Stiles told me the other day that it’s so close it’s almost a little person now. You’re not going to sacrifice that baby for them. Okay? Cora may be your family but you’re my family too and you don’t get to. Not alone.” 

Derek glares at him. “So what? We both risk our lives?”

Scott deflates at that and gives him a sheepish smile. “Well, yeah. Don’t we do that anyway?”

“Point. But if I say run-“

“I reserve the right to tell you to go to hell.”

This kid, Derek thinks, is something else. He’s so damn good that it makes Derek ache with gratitude and hope and loss. He hopes Scott’s right, that together they’ll be enough to get through this because he wants Scott in his cub’s life. He’s got so much to give to a kid, a lot more than Derek but he’s not thinking about that now.

The future isn’t where Derek’s answers are for the next fight. His strength is in the past and the present. He’ll look at the possible future if he survives this. 

“On three?” he asks.

Scott nods. “Works for me.”

Derek takes a deep breath and pictures Cora, not now but as she was the last day he saw her, eleven years old with her hair in a long braid and lugging a Shrek backpack. He thinks about a still human Boyd standing beside a newly turned Erica saying “I want to be part of something more,” and meaning every word. He thinks of Stiles spread out underneath him blushing from the nipples up. He thinks about his cub and listens past the snarling and snapping and multitudes of thunderous heartbeats to the tiny racing one inside him. 

He can do this. 

He is going to do this.

“One. Two. Three!” 

The two of them together are not enough, even with the way they explode into the boiler room. There is a human in here, one whose sent the other wolves have already found, and distracting them from prey is no small feat. Competition over food is no contest after months in a cage, Derek reasons as he grabs Boyd around the neck and drags him back. 

His Alpha status and strength pours out of him now because his pack is here, so many of them. There are three in this room with the two he saw earlier and with his mate and Lydia and the Sheriff and, he’ll begrudgingly admit, Allison, he has built a small army even if they are warped in on themselves. They are all still _his_ and so is their power. 

That’s why he’s not surprised when the change comes. Scott goes down under Cora’s assault and in answer, Derek roars so loud it shakes his own bones, waking Alpha power hidden there. When he begins to shift from his beta form to something new, Derek expects something monstrous, like Peter had been. Maybe he wouldn’t be seven feet tall and foam at the mouth but he wasn’t his mother. He could never measure up to Talia Hale, so the idea of becoming fully transformed doesn’t occur to him until his paws hit the ground.

He glories in the feeling of being purely wolf. His throat vibrates with fierce howls, long and wild, and everyone in the boiler room freezes. Good. 

When he pads over to check on Scott he realizes how large he is. He barely has to look up to meet his beta’s eyes. 

Dire wolf, a mental voice that sounds suspiciously like Stiles supplies. That doesn’t sound exactly right. No mortal wolf is this large, no matter what Stiles and his Game of Thrones marathon say but it’s close enough for government work. 

Taking down Cora and Boyd seems less risky and even more imperative. They are his betas, they are out of control, and they will be stopped. If his paws and claws and teeth must stop them so be it. 

He can feel blood in his fur, after the moon sets and they sink back into their human bodies. Exhaustion weighs him down like one of those ridiculous ACME anvils and Scott looks like he was dragged behind a truck over ten miles of bad road but they are all alive. That’s what matters. 

His cub twists in his womb as if to confirm this with a sharp kick right in his ribs. It makes Derek smile a wide doggy smile. Fuck he hurts but that’s okay. “Everything is okay.”

Scott is staring at him, frowning. It’s killing his afterglow. Derek sighs at him and shakes his head. “What?” he demands.

“Derek?” Scott approaches with carefully measured steps. “Are you still in there?”

“In where, idiot?”

“Come on, man; the moon’s down. Fight’s over. This isn’t cool anymore.”

“I’m aware.”

“You’re freaking me out. Change back already, okay? The wolf thing was good but I need dude-Derek back.”

A glance down at the blood splattered floor tells him what he needs to know. He has paws where his feet should be, huge lupine paws covered in pitch-black fur. The claws shine silver in the low light. 

Well, shit.

He closes his eyes and focuses. It should work the same. His anchor is different now - his mate, his pack, the human life he’s built in a house with running water and heat and A/C and cable and the Skittles and M&Ms that Stiles buys him by the handful because he knows they’re Derek’s secret weakness. It’s a gentler anchor than anger but much stronger at the same time. 

It takes a terrifyingly long time for him to shift. Minutes. His anchor isn’t enough.

He bends down and rips into his foreleg with his teeth. Pain makes you human. Blood gushes from the wound and agony ricochets up his beastly shoulder to his face and blinds him. It’s not enough. He digs in to his chest with a claw, deep, deeper, and lets out an involuntary whine like a kicked puppy at the pain. He throws himself into a wall so hard brick dust falls on him and the sound of bones breaking are audible. 

Scott is watching him anxiously and pacing the whole time, stopping only to check and make sure Cora and Boyd are still unconscious. He is crying too, after a while, the salt smell drifting to Derek’s hyper-sensitive nose over the blood. Derek wants to cry too but he can’t. Wolves don’t cry. 

The wounds knit closed with alarming speed, faster than any he’s ever had. It hurts so much he wants to scream. Instead, more pathetic whines burst free from his throat. He finally comes back to his human body fully healed, naked, curled on the floor, with tears in his eyes.

He’s never felt trapped by his nature before. He isn’t like Scott or the other betas. There isn’t some separate wolf element of self for him. It’s unified with his humanity so completely they are one being. That he should be overwhelmed to the point of being held hostage by his own body without electric torture or wolfsbane working against him is alien and horrifying.

He can’t get up but he knows what he needs to do next. “We need to get them somewhere safe.” 

“Derek.”

“And the teacher.”

“Derek, that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen you do. The worst. Out of all of it.”

Well it’s not like Derek wanted to brutalize himself. That wasn’t for fun just now. He’ll get to add that to his nightmare fuel but it is what it is just like everything else. You pick up and move on, Derek knows, so you can get where you want to go. Scott needs to learn that. “The sooner we do that the sooner we can go home.” He swallows hard and looks up into Scott’s liquid brown eyes. He’s still crying. Jesus fucking Christ this is a mess. He feels raw in a way that has nothing to do with the physical. “I want to go home.”

“So go,” Scott sniffs as he unzips his pants. “I’ll call Mr. Argent and Jackson and Isaac will help me.” He pulls his belt out then steps out of them. It leaves Scott in his boxers as he holds them out to Derek. They’re smiley face boxers. 

Derek wonders if this is what going insane feels like. “What are you doing?”

“You can’t just wander around naked. Take them.” He lets out a strained laugh as he crosses over and drops them by Derek’s waist. “I really don’t want to see your junk.”

“You’re a strange kid.”

“Stiles would have something to say about the pot and the kettle here.” He toes his pants closer. “Put them on and go home or I’ll call him and he can pick you up after I tell him what just happened.”

Derek glares at him and pushes himself up to sit. His arms work now and he pulls on each leg of the pants angrily. “That’ll be difficult if you’re dead.”

“Then go home. Please.”

“I’ll wait till Argent and the boys get here.”

Scott sighs but says nothing. Derek will take it. “I’m going to go take care of the teacher.” He shouldn’t have to limp over to his shredded shirt. He’s healed but it hurts to pull it over his head. He’s pushed through worse so he ignores it as he walks to the supply closet and rips open the door. 

The brunette teacher is pretty, or would be if she weren’t cowering. He holds out a hand to her and she moves slowly, shaking, to take it. Her hands are smooth and soft and he focuses on the feel of her skin as he walks her to her car, sees her inside and watches her taillights disappear. Chris Argent’s car appears less than a minute after she’s gone. 

Derek doesn’t talk to them although he probably should. He does the weak thing, the cowardly thing, and runs full tilt towards the Stilinski house. He wants his bed and Stiles’s heartbeat and sleep. He feels only moderately crippling guilt as he runs on bare feet across Beacon Hills but he’s been living with guilt for years now. He’s learned how to ignore it.


End file.
